Your feet, hands and ears are like miniature versions of your whole body. Specific pressure and techniques are applied to these same areas and generate a response in the corresponding part of your body. This is known as reflexology.
I recently completed my first half marathon. Yay! This is how reflexology helped me up to and after the race.
The absolute deepest sleep
Back in mid-January I reluctantly returned my temperamental but otherwise awesome Garmin Forerunner 15 activity tracker and exchanged it for a FitBit HR (heart rate) activity tracker. One neat feature I love is being able to study my sleep. So imagine my excitement when I saw the metrics for what I knew and felt to be true – namely that reflexology promotes blissful sleep. One afternoon a few weeks ago I was the lucky recipient of an extremely relaxing and specific reflexology treatment and experienced unparalleled quality sleep later that night. The figures on my FitBit HR show my heart rate slumped to 42 beats per minute (my lowest ever recorded). I usually hover around the 44-52 beats per minute during sleep.
If you feel you could use more or deeper sleep, add reflexology to your list of options.
Limber up!
What I was most frightened of whilst training for the half marathon was the thought of getting an injury that would put me out of action for a few weeks and severely set me back. Luckily, through diligent preparation such as stretching and warming up of the main muscle groups and doing reflexology on myself, I was able to avoid this fate. And because the whole body is worked on during reflexology– via the feet (or hands, or ears), the body is in better shape to start exercising. Tip: the key here is consistency.
Post exercise bliss
Not surprisingly after running 21km, my feet were very open to the idea of an invigorating foot reflexology session. As a result of the run I did experience delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and sore hips, calf and quad muscles, however all was back to normal within 3 days. Much faster than expected! If you would like to see if reflexology can help you recover from moderate to intense activity, let’s talk!
3 ways in
Because reflexology can be performed on the feet, the hands or the ears there are 3 ways to tackle health concerns. Performed in unison, the body seems to fast-track healing. Why not try it and see?
The ear reflexology chart above shows a few major points that are useful in preparing the body for most exercises. These same points are also often used post-exercise to help the body repair micro-tears and speed up healing.